Example of a bottleneck, with fingerpicks and resonator guitar.

Slide guitar or bottleneck guitar is a particular method or technique for playing the guitar. The term slide refers to the motion of the slide against the strings, while bottleneck refers to the original material of choice for such slides: the necks of glass bottles. Instead of altering the pitch of the strings in the normal manner (by pressing the string against frets), a slide is placed upon the string to vary its vibrating length, and pitch. This slide can then be moved along the string without lifting, creating continuous transitions in pitch.

Slide guitar is most often played (assuming a right-handed player and guitar):

• With the guitar in the normal position, using a slide called a bottleneck on one of the fingers of the left hand; this is known as bottleneck guitar.
• With the guitar held horizontally, with the belly uppermost and the bass strings toward the player, and using a slide called a 'steel' held in the left hand; this is known as 'lap steel guitar'.

History[link]

The technique of using a slide on a string has been traced to one-stringed African instruments^[1] similar to a "Diddley bow". The tuning and bend filled playing style resembles the blues-harp.^[2]

The technique was made popular by African American blues artists. The first musician to be recorded using the style was Sylvester Weaver who recorded two solo pieces "Guitar Blues" and "Guitar Rag" in 1923. Some of the blues artists who most prominently used the slide include gospel singer Blind Willie Johnson, Blind Willie McTell, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Son House, Robert Johnson as well as Casey Bill Weldon of the Memphis Jug Band. The sound has since become commonplace in country and Hawaiian music. It is also used in rock, by bands and artists such as Canned Heat, The Allman Brothers Band, Led Zeppelin, Ry Cooder, Bonnie Raitt, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Little Feat, Eagles, ZZ Top and AC/DC. The Rolling Stones featured a slide guitar as early as their 1963 recording of the John Lennon/Paul McCartney song "I Wanna Be Your Man". Guitarist Brian Jones played slide in a very blues-oriented style. His successor Mick Taylor also displayed his own slide guitar skills while with the band, using a bottleneck on studio recordings and during live performances. Many early Pink Floyd songs such as "See Emily Play" (played with a Zippo lighter for a slide), feature Syd Barrett's slide guitar performances, reflecting the band's original Chicago urban blues repertoire from musicians such as Bo Diddley and Slim Harpo. Canned Heat's Alan Wilson also helped bring slide guitar to the rock music industry in the late 1960s which he used frequently during concerts to create a buzzing delta blues boogie which can be heard on tracks such as London Blues, I Love My Baby, Sandy Blues, and countless others and can also be seen during their performances at the Monterey Pop Festival on Rollin and Tumblin' and at Woodstock During Woodstock Boogie and On The Road Again. George Harrison experimented with slide guitar during the latter half of The Beatles' career, first using the technique on an early outtake recording of "Strawberry Fields Forever" in 1966. He later used slide extensively during his solo career on songs such as "My Sweet Lord", "Cheer Down" and the Traveling Wilburys' "Handle With Care", as well as on The Beatles' 1995 reunion single "Free as a Bird".

Arguably the first influential classic electric blues slide guitarist is Elmore James, whose riff in the song "Dust My Broom" is copied from Robert Johnson^[3] and is held in particularly high regard. Blues legend Muddy Waters was also very influential, particularly in developing the electric Chicago blues slide guitar from the acoustic Mississippi Delta slide guitar. Texas blues musician Johnny Winter developed his distinctive style through years of touring with Waters. Slide player Roy Rogers honed his slide skills by touring with blues artist John Lee Hooker. John Lee's cousin Earl Hooker may have been the first to use wah-wah and slide together.^{[citation needed]}

Like Alan Wilson, Duane Allman played a key role in bringing slide guitar into rock music, through his work with The Allman Brothers Band, specifically on the 1971 live album At Fillmore East and with Derek and the Dominos' Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs album. Beginning in the late 1960s, Allman used an empty glass Coricidin medicine bottle, which he wore over his ring finger as a slide. This was later picked up by other slide guitarists such as Bonnie Raitt, Rory Gallagher, Gary Rossington of Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Joe Walsh, who used his middle finger and later in the mid 80s, switched to a brass slide. Such bottles eventually went out of production in the early 1980s, although replicas have been produced since 1985, including a copy of Allman's slide used by another Allman Brothers member, Derek Trucks, which was made of Dunlop Pyrex, giving the same sound as the glass slide, without the danger of shattering.

Allman extended the expressive range of the slide guitar by incorporating the harmonica effects of Sonny Boy Williamson II, most clearly in the Allman Brothers' cover version of Sonny Boy's "One Way Out", heard on their album Eat a Peach. His playing on the original studio recording of "Layla" imparted a sublime quality for which the song is distinctly memorable.

Most recently lap style slide has been re-born via artists like Jack White, Sean Kirkwood and Xavier Rudd - both players of weissenborns, the former using original early 1900s instruments long with modern day variations such as his own co-designed Asher signature model, the latter using modern reproductions of weissenborn.

Equipment[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

Slides may be used on any guitar, but slides generally and steels in particular are often used on instruments specifically made to be played in this manner. These include:

• All steel guitars.
• Many (perhaps most) resonator guitars, particularly Dobros and their descendants.
• Lap slide guitars, particularly Weissenborns and their descendants.
• Conventional electric guitar.

Resonator guitar played with a horizontal slide.

An ordinary guitar, either electric or acoustic, can be used for playing slide. Often the strings are raised a little higher off the neck than they would be for ordinary guitar playing. This is done especially if the free fingers are not going to be used for fretting. An extension nut may be used to achieve the higher string height at the peghead end of the neck. This is just a normal nut, with the slots filed less deeply, and often in a straight line rather than following the radius of the fretboard.

The lap steel and the pedal steel are guitars that have evolved especially for playing slide in the horizontal position. Resophonic or resonator guitars have often been employed for slide playing, typically held horizontally. They are sometimes known as Dobros after the Dopyera brothers, whose company first made them. National is another brand. In resonator guitars, rather than the sound being produced by the body's hollow, a special bridge transfers the vibrations from the strings to a metal cone placed inside the body.

Approximately in 1975, glass guitar slides started appearing in Music shops across America. Clear Glass Manufacturing Company and Clayton Products supplied the majority of the market. Both companies grew, though eventually Clear Glass was sold to Dunlop Manufacturing. Borosilicate glass (Pyrex) was developed by Corning Glass Works. Modern bottleneck slides are still manufactured by companies such as Dunlop Mfg., Steve Clayton, Inc., Mr. B's Bottleneck Guitar Slides, Bluemoon Bottleneck Company and Diamond Bottlenecks.

A slide can be made with any type of smooth hard material that allows tones to resonate. The slide's weight (in terms of density and wall thickness) cause differences in sustain, timbre, and loudness, while the surface structure and material affect tonal clarity and timbre. Heavier bottlenecks usually can produce longer, warmer and louder tones, but they also require more mastery to play with.^[4]

With the sliding technique originating from the cut off neck of a glass bottle, bottlenecks usually still have the same tubular shape and a length of one to three inches, and glass still remains a popular material. Borosilicate glass is often found in cheaper, entry-level slides. It is easier to shape as it can withstand higher temperatures. Soda-lime glass is heavier which helps produce a better sound, while lead glass improves tonal quality.^[4] Glass coloring alters the timbre. The addition of iron oxide turns glass green and hardens it, causing a louder and sharper tone with a warmer sustain, while cobalt oxide colors it blue and produces the sharpest, loudest tones.^[4] The structural properties of colored glass promote withstanding mechanical shock, which allows for automated manufacturing.

In 1989, Terrie Lambert invented the Moonshine (ceramic) slide that produces a timbre in between that of brass and glass, and the Mudslide (porcelain) slide, which just as brass slides is quite heavy, producing richer, fuller and resonating tones with more harmonics. As a result, they are often used in blues music. The Moonshine and Mudslide slides are glazed on the outside but porous on the inside so that finger moisture is absorbed, preventing slippage. Metals such as stainless steel, chrome and aluminium cause a bright penetrating sound and are mostly used with electric guitars, among others for rock music. Less frequently used types of materials include stag antler, buffalo horn and bone, as the time and effort needed to create one is often too much when conventional slides are available. Segments of PVC piping can be used to achieve a slide, and is common among those who do not choose to buy a slide.

Besides differences in material, many variations in bottlenecks exist. Square, beveled or rounded edges may allow a player to apply different techniques, while tapered rather than straight sides may help improve control and cause less damping. Pedal steel players may prefer using tonebars, which have one capped end. One recent development is the rise of hybrid slides. Glass Moonshine slides are made of glass, but have a porous ceramic interior that helps prevent slipping; other slides have been designed to reduce the weight of brass or porcelain slides by using a lightweight interior, while still others are made of glass on the front and of metal on the back to allow easy switching.

Although the use of hollow bottlenecks is preferred by many players because only one finger is required to hold it, leaving the other fingers free for normal fretting, sliding can be done in many ways. One alternative is to use a solid metal bar or rod, about the same size as a bottleneck slide, laid across the strings of the guitar and held by the fingers of the fretting hand being laid on it to either side, parallel to it. Shotglasses, pipes, and stones have also been used to good effect, as have rings, spoons and even cigarette lighters. Even a knife can reportedly be used:

"As he played, he pressed a knife on the strings of the guitar in a manner popularised by Hawaiian guitarists who used steel bars. The effect was unforgettable." ―W. C. Handy on his first hearing slide guitar, a blues player in the Tutwiler, Mississippi train station.

Technique[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

A bottleneck slide on an acoustic guitar

The slide is pressed against the strings—lightly, so as not to touch the strings to the fretboard, and parallel to the frets. The pitch of the strings can then be continuously varied by moving the slide up and down the neck. The usual limitation in fretted guitar playing of twelve pitches per octave does not apply. Indeed, in pure slide guitar playing the frets serve no purpose, other than as a visual reference. The technique lends itself to glissandi (swoops up or down to a note); in addition it has the ability to evoke sounds of the human voice, crying, sighing or weeping, or natural noises. Another strength of the technique is its vibrato, which is easily achieved by oscillating the hand so that the slide goes quickly back and forth.

The major limitation of slide playing is of course that only one chord shape is available: whatever the strings happen to be tuned to going straight across. Many slide guitarists will still use their free fingers to fret the strings if they want to employ that sound as well. Using the free fingers opens up the possibility of playing chord shapes other than the straight line given by the slide. One strategy is to use the free fingers for rhythm work, and intersperse this with lead phrases played with the slide.

The guitar may be held in the normal guitar-playing position (that is, with the face of the guitar more-or-less vertical) or it may be held flat, with the face of the guitar horizontal. In the latter case the guitar may sit flat in one's lap or on a stool, face up, or held in this position by a strap, and played standing up. If holding the guitar in the normal vertical position, it is more common to use the tube type of slide. In the horizontal approach, solid bars or "bullets" are more commonly used, and the grip is overhand: the hand is not wrapped around the neck, the index finger is nearest the bridge, the little finger nearest the nut, fingers pointing away from the chest.

Usually, a slide player will use open tuning, although standard tuning is sometimes used. In open tuning the strings are tuned to sound a chord when not fretted; sliding the bottleneck up and down the guitar neck gives that chord in various keys. The chord tuned to is most often major. Open tunings commonly used with slide include Open D or "Vestapol" tuning: D-A-d-f#-a-d; and Open G or "Spanish" tuning: D-G-d-g-b-d . Open E and Open A, formed by raising each of those tunings a whole tone, are also common. These tunings can be traced back to the 19th century through the banjo, predating the Hawaiian guitar. Another open D tuning is D-A-d-a-d-f#. Other tunings are used as well.

Occasionally a bottleneck is used on only the highest two strings of a guitar in standard tuning, usually in live performance to introduce just a short passage of bottleneck effect into a piece which otherwise consists mainly of guitar played in standard fashion.

Slide guitar is most often fingerpicked, with or without plastic or metal picks on the thumb and fingers. However some players use a flatpick (plectrum).

The bottleneck or tube type of slide is usually worn over the ring (3rd) or little (4th) finger. Wearing it on the 4th finger has the advantage of leaving one more finger free to fret notes if desired. However some players feel that they get better control using the ring finger. Most instructors recommend letting one or more of the fingers behind the slide rest lightly on the strings to help mute unwanted vibrations.

Double slide guitar system[link]

Brian Cober's double slide technique in action

A relatively new technique, expanding the musical range and sonic capabilities of slide guitar, is the system of double slide guitar. It was invented by Brian Cober,^[5] a Canadian blues musician. In double slide, the first slide is placed on the middle finger (usually a modified steel bar that can be put on the finger), and a modified thumb slide is put on the thumb that is able to cover two strings. Double slide is meant to be played on a six-string lap guitar (or a regular six-string guitar modified with the strings raised for high action like a lap guitar), usually tuned to open E tuning. The double slide guitar system enables the player to play chords not heard in open tunings, such as minor chords, dominant seventh chords, etc. and provides a greater use of technique in soloing.^[6] Will Ray of the Hellecasters uses a similar technique, wearing "stealth" pinky-type slides on either hand.

Effects[link]

In recent years, some guitarists have developed the bottleneck technique further by introducing other guitar effects.

Bass[link]

John Paul Jones playing slide on his bass guitar

A few musicians have used slides with bass guitar—slide bass. Mark Sandman was probably the best known proponent (with Morphine, he performed primarily on a custom two-string slide bass guitar). Bill Laswell, Robert Weaver^{[disambiguation needed ]}, Kevin Rutmanis, Marc Sloan and Stefan Lessard have also played slide bass. John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin has performed on a custom-made bass lap steel. Timo Shanko of G. Love & Special Sauce, incorporates slide playing on electric bass. Jazz bassist Victor Wooten occasionally uses a slide for soloing during his live performances. Similarly to John Paul Jones, Mark Robbins, bass player and song writer from Joan, plays a number of songs in the standing lap slide style.

Samples[link]

	"Traveling Riverside Blues" noicon 29 second sample of the song "Layla" noicon 27 second sample of the song
Problems listening to these files? See media help.

The following samples give an impression of the various styles of slide guitar. First is Robert Johnson's "Traveling Riverside Blues", one of the best-known examples of Delta blues slide guitar. Second, a part of Duane Allman's solo from Derek and the Dominos's "Layla" is included, to give an impression of highly acclaimed slide work in rock music.

See also[link]

Guitar portal

• Blues guitar playing
• Classical guitar
• Electric guitar
• Guitarist
• Lap steel guitar
• List of slide guitarists
• Lute
• Pedal steel guitar
• Vichitra veena
• Chitra veena

References[link]

• van der Merwe, Peter (1989), Origins of the Popular Style: The Antecedents of Twentieth-Century Popular Music, Oxford: Clarendon Press, ISBN 0-19-316121-4 

1. ^ Payne, Rick. "History and Origin of the Slide Guitar in the Blues". Lessons. Guitar Noise. http://www.guitarnoise.com/lesson/slide-guitar-history/. Retrieved 3 March 2010. 
2. ^ (van der Merwe 1989, pp. 66–67)
3. ^ Oliver, Paul (1984). Blues Off the Record. New York, N.Y.: Da Capo Press. p. 109. ISBN 0-306-80321-6. 
4. ^ ^{a b c} McWee, I. (2011). Diamond Bottlenecks: F.A.Q.'s. Retrieved March 7, 2011.
5. ^ Brian Cober, "Home Page"
6. ^ Jonathan St. Rose "Brian Cober, blues guitarist"

External links[link]

• Slide Guitar for Beginners
• Slide Guitars, Pictures & History
• What are the best guitar slides?
• Open-G tuning, Open-E tuning and Slide guitar An overview of Open-G and Open-E slide

Roy Rogers
Rogers performing at Knott's Berry Farm
Background information
Birth name	Leonard Franklin Slye
Born	(1911-11-05)November 5, 1911 Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
Died	July 6, 1998(1998-07-06) (aged 86) Apple Valley, California, USA
Genres	Country
Occupations	Actor, singer
Instruments	Vocals, guitar
Years active	1932–1998
Website	royrogers.com

Roy Rogers, born Leonard Franklin Slye (November 5, 1911 – July 6, 1998), was an American singer and cowboy actor, one of the most heavily marketed and merchandised stars of his era, as well as being the namesake of the Roy Rogers Restaurants franchised chain. He and his wife Dale Evans, his golden palomino, Trigger, and his German Shepherd dog, Bullet, were featured in more than 100 movies and The Roy Rogers Show. The show ran on radio for nine years before moving to television from 1951 through 1957. His productions usually featured a sidekick, often either Pat Brady (who drove a Jeep called "Nellybelle"), Andy Devine, or the crotchety George "Gabby" Hayes. Rogers's nickname was "King of the Cowboys". Evans's nickname was "Queen of the West."

Biography[link]

Early life[link]

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (September 2010)

Leonard Franklin Slye was born to Andrew ("Andy") and Mattie (Womack) Slye in Cincinnati, Ohio, where his family lived in a tenement building on 2nd Street. (Riverfront Stadium was constructed at this location in 1970 and Leonard would later joke that he had been born at second base.) Dissatisfied with his job and city life, Andy Slye and his brother Will built a 12-by-50-foot houseboat from salvage lumber, and, in July 1912, the Slye family floated up the Ohio River towards Portsmouth, Ohio. Desiring a more stable existence in Portsmouth, the Slyes purchased land on which to build a home, but the flood of 1913 allowed them to move the houseboat to their property and continue living in it on dry land.

In 1919, the Slyes purchased a farm in Duck Run, located near Lucasville, Ohio about 12 miles north of Portsmouth. There they built a six-room home. Leonard's father soon realized that the farm alone would provide insufficient income for his family, so he took a job at a shoe factory in Portsmouth. He lived there during the week and returned home on the weekends, bearing gifts for the family following paydays. One notable gift was a horse on which Leonard learned the basics of horsemanship.

After completing the eighth grade, Leonard attended high school in McDermott, Ohio. When he was 17, his family returned to Cincinnati, where his father began work at another shoe factory. He soon decided on the necessity to help his family financially, so he quit high school, joined his father at the shoe factory, and began attending night school. After being ridiculed for falling asleep in class, however, he quit school and never returned.

Leonard and his father felt imprisoned by their factory jobs. In 1929, his older sister, Mary, moved to Lawndale, California with her husband. Father and son decided to quit their shoe factory jobs. The family packed their 1923 Dodge for a visit with Mary and stayed four months before returning to Ohio. Almost immediately afterward, Leonard had the opportunity to travel to California with Mary's father-in-law, and the rest of the family followed in the spring of 1930.

The Slyes rented a small house near Mary. Leonard and his father immediately found employment as truck drivers for a highway construction project. They reported to work one morning, however, to learn their employer had gone bankrupt. The economic hardship of the Great Depression had followed them west, and the Slyes soon found themselves among the economic refugees traveling from job to job picking fruit and living in worker campsites. (He would later read John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and marvel at its accuracy.) One day, Andy Slye was told of a shoe factory hiring in Los Angeles and asked Leonard to join him in applying there for work. Leonard, having seen the joy that his guitar and singing had brought to the destitute around the campfires, hesitantly told his father that he was going to pursue a living in music. With his father's blessing, he and cousin Stanley Slye went to Los Angeles and sought musical engagements as The Slye Brothers.

In 1932, Leonard, now known as "Len," met Lucille Ascolese while on tour. That same year, a palomino colt was foaled in Santa Cietro, CA, named "Golden Cloud", and later renamed "Trigger" in 1938 after he was acquired by Roy. In May 1933, Len, 21, proposed to Lucille, 19, via a radio broadcast. Len then went on tour with the "O-Bar-O Cowboys" and in June 1933 met Grace Arline Wilkins at a Roswell, New Mexico radio station. She traded Len a lemon pie for his singing "Swiss Yodel" over the air. By August 1934, Len and Lucille had separated as she was reportedly jealous and tired of being a musician's wife. Len and Lucille's divorce was granted on May 28, 1935, and became final on June 8, 1936. Having corresponded since their first meeting, Len and Grace Arline Wilkins were married in Roswell, New Mexico, on June 11, 1936.^[1]

In 1941, the couple adopted a girl, Cheryl Darlene. Two years later, Arline bore a daughter, Linda Lou.

Rogers and Arline had a son, Roy Jr. ("Dusty") in 1946, but Arline died of complications from the birth a few days afterward on November 3. Rogers had met Dale Evans in 1944 when she was cast in a movie with Rogers. Following Arline's death, Rogers and Evans soon fell in love, and Rogers proposed to her during a rodeo at Chicago Stadium. They married on New Year's Eve in 1947 at the Flying L Ranch in Davis, Oklahoma, where a few months earlier they had filmed Home in Oklahoma. Rogers and Evans remained married until Rogers's death in 1998.^[1]

Career[link]

Leonard Slye moved to California to become a singer. After four years of little success, he formed the Sons of the Pioneers with Bob Nolan and Tim Spencer, a Western cowboy music group, in 1934. The group hit it big with songs like "Cool Water" and "Tumbling Tumbleweeds". From his first film appearance in 1935, he worked steadily in western films, including a large supporting role as a singing cowboy while still billed as "Leonard Slye" in a Gene Autry movie. In 1938, when Autry temporarily walked out on his movie contract, Slye was immediately rechristened "Roy Rogers." Slye's stage name was suggested by Republic Picture's staff after Will Rogers and the shortening of Leroy. and assigned the lead in Under Western Stars. Rogers became a matinee idol and American legend. A competitor for Gene Autry as the nation's favorite singing cowboy was suddenly born. In addition to his own movies, Rogers played a supporting role in the John Wayne classic Dark Command (1940). Rogers became a major box office attraction.

Roy Rogers in The Carson City Kid

In the Motion Picture Herald Top Ten Money-Making Western Stars poll, Rogers was listed for 15 consecutive years from 1939 to 1954, holding first place from 1943 to 1954.^[2] He appeared in the similar Box Office poll from 1938 to 1955, holding first place from 1943 to 1952. (In the final three years of that poll he was second only to Randolph Scott.) ^[3] Although these two polls are really an indication only of the popularity of series stars, Rogers also appeared in the Top Ten Money Makers Poll of all films in 1945 and 1946.^[4]

Rogers was an idol for many children through his films and television shows. Most of his postwar films were in Trucolor during an era when almost all other B-movies were black-and-white. Some of his movies would segue into animal adventures, in which Rogers's horse Trigger would go off on his own for a while, with the camera following him.

With money from not only Rogers' films but his own public appearances going to Republic Pictures, Rogers brought a clause into a 1940 contract with the studio where he would have the right to his likeness, voice and name for merchandising.^[5] There were Roy Rogers action figures, cowboy adventure novels, and playsets, as well as a comic strip, a long-lived Dell Comics comic book series (Roy Rogers Comics) written by Gaylord Du Bois, and a variety of marketing successes. Roy Rogers was second only to Walt Disney in the amount of items featuring his name.^[6] The Sons of the Pioneers continued their popularity, and they have never stopped performing from the time Rogers started the group, replacing members as they retired or passed away (all original members are deceased). Although Rogers was no longer an active member, they often appeared as Rogers' backup group in films, radio, and television, and Rogers would occasionally appear with them in performances up until his death. In August 1950, Evans and Rogers had a daughter, Robin Elizabeth, who had Down Syndrome and died of complications with mumps shortly before her second birthday. Evans wrote about losing their daughter in her book Angel Unaware.

Rogers and the Sons of the Pioneers in the film, Rainbow Over Texas

Rogers and Evans were also well known as advocates for adoption and as founders and operators of children's charities. They adopted several children. Both were outspoken Christians. In Apple Valley, California, where they made their home, numerous streets and highways as well as civic buildings have been named after them in recognition of their efforts on behalf of homeless and handicapped children. Rogers was an active Freemason and a Shriner, and was noted for his support of their charities.

Rogers and Evans's famous theme song, "Happy Trails", was written by Evans; they sang it as a duet to sign off their television show. In the fall of 1962, the couple co-hosted a comedy-western-variety program, The Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Show, aired on ABC. It was cancelled after three months, losing in the ratings to The Jackie Gleason Show on CBS. He also made numerous cameo or guest appearances on other popular television shows, starring as himself or other cowboy-type characters, such as in an episode of Wonder Woman called "The Bushwackers".^[7] Rogers also owned a Hollywood production company which handled his own series. It also filmed other undertakings, including the 1955-1956 CBS western series Brave Eagle starring Keith Larsen as a young peaceful Cheyenne chief, Kim Winona as Morning Star, his romantic interest, and the Hopi Indian Anthony Numkena as Keena, Brave Eagle's foster son.

Rogers and Dale Evans at the 61st Academy Awards in 1989

In 1968 Rogers licensed his name to the Marriot corporation, which converted its Hot Shoppes locations to Roy Rogers Restaurants, with which Rogers otherwise had no involvement.

Rogers owned a Thoroughbred racehorse named Triggairo, who won 13 career races including the 1975 El Encino Stakes at Santa Anita Park.^[8]

Death[link]

When Rogers died of congestive heart failure on July 6, 1998, he was residing in Apple Valley, California. He was interred at Sunset Hills Cemetery ^[9] in Apple Valley, as was his wife, Dale Evans, three years later.^[10]

Homages and influence[link]

Rogers and Dale Evans at Knott's Berry Farm in the 1970s

For his contribution to the motion picture industry, Rogers has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1752 Vine Street, a second star at 1733 Vine Street for his contribution to radio, and a third star at 1620 Vine Street for his contribution to the television industry. Rogers and Evans were inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, in 1976 and Rogers was inducted again as a member of the Sons of the Pioneers in 1995. Rogers was also twice elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame, first as a member of The Sons of the Pioneers in 1980 and as a soloist in 1988.

Rogers was mentioned in the Lyle Lovett single "If I Had A Boat", Elton John's 1973 album "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" contained the escapist ballad "Roy Rogers", and Toby Keith's "Should've Been A Cowboy".

In the 1988 film Die Hard, the Bruce Willis character John McClane used the nom de guerre of "Roy", saying "I was always kinda partial to Roy Rogers actually".

American Dad character Roger uses "Roy Rogers" as a pseudonym in the episode "Roy Rogers McFreely".

Cheryl Rogers Barnett, a daughter of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, has written with Frank Thompson; Cowboy Princess: Life with My Parents, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans'.^[11]

Filmography[link]

Discography[link]

Charted albums[link]

Charted singles[link]

• ^A"Hoppy, Gene and Me" also peaked at number 65 on the Billboard Hot 100^[12] and number 38 on the RPM Adult Contemporary Tracks chart in Canada.

Music videos[link]

Popular songs recorded by Rogers[link]

• "Don't Fence Me In"
• "Hold That Critter Down"
• "Little White Cross On The Hill"
• "One More Ride"
• "Ride Ranger Ride"
• "That Pioneer Mother Of Mine"
• "Tumbling Tumbleweeds"
• "Way Out There" (singing and yodeling)
• "Why, Oh Why, Did I Ever Leave Wyoming?"
• "Hold On Partner" (duet with Clint Black)

See also[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Roy Rogers

• Roy Rogers Restaurants
• Roy Rogers cocktail
• Earl W. Bascom, cowboy artist who worked with Roy Rogers

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Rogers, Roy; Evans, Dale; Stowers, Carlton (1979). Happy Trails: The Story of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans. Waco, Texas: Word Books. ISBN 0-8499-0086-7. 
• Enss, Chris; Kazanjian, Howard (2005). The Cowboy and the Senorita: A Biography of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans (1st ed.). Guilford, CT: TwoDot. ISBN 978-0-7627-3830-4. 
• Phillips, Robert W. (1995). Roy Rogers : A Biography. Jefferson, NC [u.a.]: McFarland. ISBN 0-89950-937-1. 
• Zwisohn, Laurence. (1998). "Roy Rogers". In The Encyclopedia of Country Music. Paul Kingsbury, Editor. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 456–457.

External links[link]

• Roy Rogers at the Internet Movie Database
• Official family website
• Database and Cover gallery of Roy Rogers comic book appearances
• Roy Rogers Ranch
• Interview with Delores Chapman who had a bit part with Roy Rogers in North of the Great Divide
• Profile at Turner Classic Movies
• Roy Rogers at the Internet Broadway Database
• Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum
• Dusty Rhoads: Cowboy Bassist and vocalist who toured with Roy Rogers; original member of the Whippoorwills
• I Love Comix Archive: Roy Rogers
• The Ackerman Collection of Historical Photographs
• RFD-TV Trigger and Bullet Happy Trails Tour
• Public domain Roy Rogers media at Internet Archive
• "Roy & Dale 100th Anniversary"

Andrew Winton (born February 1972, Perth) is an independent, solo, Australian musician, combining acoustic guitar, lap slide, dobro and seven-string lap guitar/bass (the Wintonbeast), with hollers and stomps to provide an engaging and authentic performance. Winton's sound has been likened to a cross between Ben Harper, Sting, Kelly-Joe Phelps and Harry Manx.^[1] His performances are driven by infectious rhythms, stunning slide, bluesy vocals, quirky lyrics and storytelling.

Winton currently lives in Perth with Karen (his wife, manager and percusionist/vocalist), and their three children.

He is brother to famed Australian author Tim Winton and has a sister, Sharyn O'Neill, who is the current Director General of the West Australian Department of Education and Training.

Winton also works part time as a high-school chaplain in Perth.

Musical career[link]

Andrew grew up listening to Deep Purple, Kiss, Frank Zappa and Johnny Cash, and started his musical life as a drummer. In his late teens he moved on to electric guitar, playing in bands and completing a Degree in Jazz at the Conservatorium of Music in Perth Western Australia. Andrew played guitar for a few years in Perth band Hodad City with Adam Bruno who was to later become Adam Brand^[2] (Multi CMA Golden Guitar Award winner), and then went on to have local success in 3Ph,^[3] a quirky funk-rock band with bandmates Stephen Kelly (bass/vox) and Paul Novosel (drums/vox) which won Western Australia's The Next Big Thing competition in 1997. The band however disbanded a short time later when Novosel ('99) and Kelly ('01) moved to the east coast to do session work. After being invited to play drums with top Perth old-timey blues band Tin Dog, Andrew was exposed further to the world of blues, roots and folk music. After seeing UK musician Rory McLeod perform in 2002, Andrew was inspired to take the solo songwriting road and began his successful transition to dobro and other lap style guitars, which are now his passion. He recorded his first solo album in 2003 with only 8 months of dobro playing under his belt. Predominantly self-taught, with a few masterclasses from Lucky Oceans thrown in for good measure, Andrew is now recognised as one of Australia's talented slide guitar players. He is also known for his eclectic mix of styles and songs, lyrics that are thought provoking, his humour and storytelling on stage, and his dynamic vocal range that has earned comparisons with Sting, Steely Dan and Harry Manx. Andrew is a musician truly doing it for the love of it, what you see is what you get.

Awards[link]

2006 saw Winton tour Australia for three months, play at numerous festivals, events and radio broadcasts,^[4] and take out first place in the Folk/Acoustic category of the Australian Songwriter's Association awards for his song Lucky Boy^[5] (as well as the award for best live performance at the awards night). Winton was a feature artist on ABC Radio National's Music Deli program, and placed in the top 10 in the instrumental category of the MusicOz awards.^[6] In 2007, Winton was nominated for a WAMi West Australian Music Industry Awards for best Blues/Roots Artist, again in 2008 for best Guitarist, and in 2009 received two nominations for best Guitarist and best Blues & Roots act.^[7] His third album The Decompression Chamber received critical acclaim.^[8]

Live[link]

Partner Karen on vocals and percussion, adding beautiful harmonies and layers, sometimes accompanies Andrew on stage. Since about March 2007, Andrew has been more regularly seen accompanied by flamboyant percussionist and longtime friend Paul Novosel on percussion/vox for most live performances. This lineup is often billed as the Andrew Winton Duo. Winton has performed at many festivals including National Folk Festival, Australian Blues Music Festival,^[9] Fairbridge Festival, Woodford Folk Festival, Nannup Music Festival, A Day On The Green^[10] Tamworth Country Music Festival, and South by Southwest Festival.^[11] For the first four months of 2009, Andrew and Paul toured most of Australia to promote Andrew's fourth studio release Surface Tension. They can also be seen performing regularly around Perth and the southwest region. The duo are credited for inaugurating the Blues on the Verandah Sunday session at the Settler's Tavern in Margaret River and have since performed there regularly with their dynamic semi-acoustic performances.

Albums[link]

Surface Tension - album released January 2009

The Decompression Chamber - album released February 2006

Can't Slow Down - mostly live EP (2005) (out of print)

Barrel O Monkeys – album (2004)

Whalebone Surf Classic – DVD soundtrack (2004)

Singles[link]

Love Paints A Picture - includes live DVD footage of the Andrew Winton Duo

External links[link]

• Official Site
• Official MySpace page

References[link]

Robert Leroy Johnson (May 8, 1911 – August 16, 1938) was an American blues singer and musician. His landmark recordings from 1936–37 display a combination of singing, guitar skills, and songwriting talent that have influenced later generations of musicians. Johnson's shadowy, poorly documented life and death at age 27 have given rise to much legend, including a Faustian myth. As an itinerant performer who played mostly on street corners, in juke joints, and at Saturday night dances, Johnson enjoyed little commercial success or public recognition in his lifetime.

His records sold poorly during his lifetime, and it was only after the first reissue of his recordings on LP in 1961 that his work reached a wider audience. Johnson is now recognized as a master of the blues, particularly of the Mississippi Delta blues style. He is credited by many rock musicians as an important influence; Eric Clapton has called Johnson "the most important blues singer that ever lived."^[1][2] Johnson was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an "Early Influence" in their first induction ceremony in 1986.^[3] In 2003, David Fricke ranked Johnson fifth in Rolling Stone 's list of 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.^[4]

Life and career[link]

Early life[link]

Robert Johnson was born in Hazlehurst, Mississippi, possibly on May 8, 1911,^[5] to Julia Major Dodds (born October 1874) and Noah Johnson (born December 1884). Julia was married to Charles Dodds (born February 1865), a relatively prosperous landowner and furniture maker with whom she had 10 children. Charles Dodds had been forced by a mob to leave Hazlehurst following a dispute with white landowners. Julia left Hazlehurst with baby Robert but after some two years sent him to live in Memphis with her husband, who had changed his name to Charles Spencer.^[6]

Around 1919, Robert rejoined his mother in the area around Tunica and Robinsonville, Mississippi. Julia's new husband was known as Dusty Willis; he was 24 years her junior. Robert was remembered by some residents as "Little Robert Dusty,"^[7] but he was registered at Tunica's Indian Creek School as Robert Spencer. In the 1920 census he is listed as Robert Spencer, living in Lucas, Arkansas with Will and Julia Willis. Robert was at school in 1924 and 1927^[8] and the quality of his signature on his marriage certificate^[9] suggests that he was relatively well educated for a boy of his background. One school friend, Willie Coffee, has been discovered and filmed, recalling that Robert was already noted for playing the harmonica and jaw harp.^[10] He also remembers that Robert was absent for long periods, which suggests that he may have been living and studying in Memphis.^[11]

After school, Robert adopted the surname of his natural father, signing himself as Robert Johnson on the certificate of his marriage to sixteen-year-old Virginia Travis in February 1929. She died in childbirth shortly after.^[12] Surviving relatives of Virginia told the blues researcher Robert "Mack" McCormick that this was a divine punishment for Robert's decision to sing secular songs, known as 'selling your soul to the Devil'. McCormick believes that Johnson himself accepted the phrase as a description of his resolve to abandon the settled life of a husband and farmer to become a full-time blues musician.^[13]

Around this time, the noted blues musician Son House moved to Robinsonville where his musical partner, Willie Brown, lived. Late in life, House remembered Johnson as a 'little boy' who was a competent harmonica player but an embarrassingly bad guitarist. Soon after, Johnson left Robinsonville for the area around Martinsville, close to his birthplace Hazlehurst, possibly searching for his natural father. Here he perfected the guitar style of Son House and learned other styles from Isaiah "Ike" Zimmerman.^[14] Ike Zimmerman was rumoured to have learned supernaturally to play guitar by visiting graveyards at midnight.^[15] When Johnson next appeared in Robinsonville, he had seemed to have acquired a miraculous guitar technique.^[16] House was interviewed at a time when the legend of Johnson's pact with the Devil was well known among blues researchers. He was asked whether he attributed Johnson's technique to this pact, and his equivocal answers have been taken as confirmation.^[5]

While living in Martinsville, Johnson fathered a child with Vergie Mae Smith. He also married Caletta Craft in May 1931. In 1932, the couple moved to Clarksdale in the Delta. Here Caletta fell ill and Johnson abandoned her for a career as a 'walking' (itinerant) musician.^[17]

Itinerant musician[link]

David "Honeyboy" Edwards was one of several blues guitarists whose testimony has been used to piece together Johnson's history

From 1932 until his death in 1938, Johnson moved frequently between large cities like Memphis, Tennessee and Helena, Arkansas and the smaller towns of the Mississippi Delta and neighboring regions of Mississippi and Arkansas.^[18][19] On occasion, he travelled much further. Fellow blues musician Johnny Shines accompanied him to Chicago, Texas, New York, Canada, Kentucky, and Indiana.^[20] Henry Townsend shared a musical engagement with him in St Louis.^[21] In many places he stayed with members of his large extended family, or with women friends.^[22] He did not marry again but formed some long term relationships with women to whom he would return periodically. One was Estella Coleman, the mother of the blues musician Robert Lockwood, Jr. In other places he stayed with a woman seduced at his first performance.^[23][24] In each location, Johnson's hosts were largely ignorant of his life elsewhere. He used different names in different places, employing at least eight distinct surnames.^[25]

Biographers have looked for consistency from musicians who knew Johnson in different contexts: Shines, who travelled extensively with him; Lockwood who knew him as his mother's partner; David "Honeyboy" Edwards whose cousin Willie Mae Powell had a relationship with Johnson.^[26] From a mass of partial, conflicting, and inconsistent eye-witness accounts,^[27] biographers have attempted to summarize Johnson's character. "He was well mannered, he was soft spoken, he was indecipherable".^[28] "As for his character, everyone seems to agree that, while he was pleasant and outgoing in public, in private he was reserved and liked to go his own way".^[29] "Musicians who knew Johnson testified that he was a nice guy and fairly average—except, of course, for his musical talent, his weakness for whiskey and women, and his commitment to the road."^[30]

When Johnson arrived in a new town, he would play for tips on street corners or in front of the local barbershop or a restaurant. Musical associates have said that in live performances Johnson often did not focus on his dark and complex original compositions, but instead pleased audiences by performing more well-known pop standards of the day^[31] – and not necessarily blues. With an ability to pick up tunes at first hearing, Johnson had no trouble giving his audiences what they wanted, and certain of his contemporaries later remarked on Johnson's interest in jazz and country music. Johnson also had an uncanny ability to establish a rapport with his audience; in every town in which he stopped, Johnson would establish ties to the local community that would serve him well when he passed through again a month or a year later.

Fellow musician Shines was 17 when he met Johnson in 1933. He estimated Johnson was maybe a year older than himself. In Samuel Charters' Robert Johnson, the author quotes Shines as saying:

"Robert was a very friendly person, even though he was sulky at times, you know. And I hung around Robert for quite a while. One evening he disappeared. He was kind of a peculiar fellow. Robert'd be standing up playing some place, playing like nobody's business. At about that time it was a hustle with him as well as a pleasure. And money'd be coming from all directions. But Robert'd just pick up and walk off and leave you standing there playing. And you wouldn't see Robert no more maybe in two or three weeks ... So Robert and I, we began journeying off. I was just, matter of fact, tagging along."

During this time Johnson established what would be a relatively long-term relationship with Estella Coleman, a woman about fifteen years his senior and the mother of musician Robert Lockwood, Jr. Johnson reportedly cultivated a woman to look after him in each town he played in. Johnson supposedly asked homely young women living in the country with their families whether he could go home with them, and in most cases the answer was 'yes'...until a boyfriend arrived or Johnson was ready to move on.

In 1941, Alan Lomax learned from Muddy Waters that Johnson had performed in the Clarksdale, Mississippi area.^[32] By 1959, historian Samuel Charters could only add that Will Shade of the Memphis Jug Band remembered Johnson had once briefly played with him in West Memphis, Arkansas.^[33] In the last year of his life, Johnson is believed to have traveled to St. Louis and possibly Illinois, and then to some states in the East.

In 1938, Columbia Records producer John H. Hammond, who owned some of Johnson's records, had record producer Don Law seek out Johnson out to book him for the first "From Spirituals to Swing" concert at Carnegie Hall in New York. On learning of Johnson's death, Hammond replaced him with Big Bill Broonzy, but still played two of Johnson's records from the stage.^[34]

Recording sessions[link]

Robert Johnson records

Johnson's recordings were released on several labels: "Milkcow's Calf Blues" on Perfect Records (top), "Love in Vain Blues" on Vocalion Records (middle), and "I Believe I'll Dust My Broom" by Conqueror Records (bottom)

In Jackson, Mississippi, around 1936, Johnson sought out H. C. Speir, who ran a general store and doubled as a talent scout. Speir put Johnson in touch with Ernie Oertle, who offered to record the young musician in San Antonio, Texas. The recording session was held on November 23, 1936 in room 414 of the Gunter Hotel in San Antonio,^[35][36][37] which Brunswick Records had set up to be a temporary recording studio. In the ensuing three-day session, Johnson played sixteen selections, and recorded alternate takes for most of these. Johnson reportedly performed facing the wall, which has been cited as evidence he was a shy man and reserved performer. This conclusion was played up in the inaccurate liner notes of the 1961 album King of the Delta Blues Singers. Ry Cooder speculates that Johnson played facing a corner to enhance the sound of the guitar, a technique he calls "corner loading".^[38]

Among the songs Johnson recorded in San Antonio were "Come On In My Kitchen", "Kind Hearted Woman Blues", "I Believe I'll Dust My Broom" and "Cross Road Blues". The first songs to appear were "Terraplane Blues" and "Last Fair Deal Gone Down", probably the only recordings of his that he would live to hear. "Terraplane Blues" became a moderate regional hit, selling 5,000 copies.

His first recorded song, "Kind Hearted Woman Blues", was part of a cycle of spin-offs and response songs that began with Leroy Carr's "Mean Mistreater Mama" (1934). According to Wald, it was "the most musically complex in the cycle"^[39] and stood apart from most rural blues as a through-composed lyric, rather than an arbitrary collection of more-or-less unrelated verses.^[40] In contrast to most Delta players, Johnson had absorbed the idea of fitting a composed song into the three minutes of a 78 rpm side.^[41] Most of Johnson's "somber and introspective" songs and performances come from his second recording session.^[42]

In 1937, Johnson traveled to Dallas, Texas, for another recording session in a makeshift studio at the Vitagraph (Warner Brothers) Building, 508 Park Avenue, where Brunswick Record Corporation was located on the third floor.^[43] Eleven records from this session would be released within the following year. Johnson did two takes of most of these songs and recordings of those takes survived. Because of this, there is more opportunity to compare different performances of a single song by Johnson than for any other blues performer of his time and place.^[44]

By the time he died, at least six of his records had been released in the South as race records.

Playback issues in extant recordings[link]

The accuracy of the pitch and speed of the extant recordings has been questioned. In The Guardian's music blog from May 2010, Jon Wilde states that "the common consensus among musicologists is that we've been listening to [Robert] Johnson at least 20% too fast;" i.e., that "the recordings were accidentally speeded up when first committed to 78 [rpm records], or else were deliberately speeded up to make them sound more exciting."^[45] He does not give a source for this statement. Former Sony music executive Lawrence Cohn, who won a Grammy for the label's 1991 reissue of Johnson's works, "acknowledges there's a possibility Johnson's 1936–37 recordings were speeded up, since the OKeh/Vocalion family of labels, which originally issued the material, was 'notorious' for altering the speed of its releases. 'Sometimes it was 78 rpms, sometimes it was 81 rpms,' he says. It's impossible to check the original sources, since the metal stampers used to duplicate the original 78 discs disappeared years ago."^[46]

Death[link]

Johnson died on August 16, 1938, at the age of 27, near Greenwood, Mississippi. He had been playing for a few weeks at a country dance in a town about 15 miles (24 km) from Greenwood. Differing accounts and theories attempt to shed light on the events preceding his death. A story often told is that one evening Johnson began flirting with a woman at a dance, the wife of the juke joint owner, according to rumor, unaware that the bottle of whiskey she gave to Johnson had been poisoned by her husband. In another version, she was a married woman unrelated to the juke joint owner. Johnson was allegedly offered an open bottle of whiskey that was laced with strychnine. Fellow blues legend Sonny Boy Williamson allegedly advised him never to drink from an offered bottle that had already been opened. According to Williamson, Johnson replied, "Don't ever knock a bottle out of my hand." Soon after, he was offered another open bottle of whiskey, also laced with strychnine, and accepted it. Johnson is reported to have begun feeling ill the evening after drinking from the bottle and had to be helped back to his room in the early morning hours. Over the next three days, his condition steadily worsened and witnesses reported that he died in a convulsive state of severe pain—symptoms which are consistent with strychnine poisoning.

Musicologist Robert "Mack" McCormick claims to have tracked down the man who murdered Johnson, and to have obtained a confession from him in a personal interview. McCormick has declined to reveal the man's name, however.^[47]

In his book Crossroads: The Life and Afterlife of Blues Legend Robert Johnson, Tom Graves uses expert testimony from toxicologists to dispute the notion that Johnson died of strychnine poisoning. He states that strychnine has such a distinctive odor and taste that it cannot be disguised, even in strong liquor. He also claims that a significant amount of strychnine would have to be consumed in one sitting to be fatal, and that death from the poison would occur within hours, not days. This observation was also noted in a recent Guitar World comment from contemporary David "Honeyboy" Edwards, who said that it couldn't have been strychnine, since he would have died much sooner than the three days he suffered.

Gravesite[link]

Alleged gravesite showing one of Robert Johnson's two tombstones

The exact location of his grave is officially unknown; three different markers have been erected at possible church cemetery burial sites outside of Greenwood.^[48]

• Research in the 1980s and 1990s strongly suggests Johnson was buried in the graveyard of the Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church near Morgan City, not far from Greenwood, in an unmarked grave. A one-ton cenotaph in the shape of an obelisk, listing all of Johnson's song titles, with a central inscription by Peter Guralnick, was placed at this location in 1990, paid for by Columbia Records and numerous smaller contributions made through the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund.
• In 1990 a small marker with the epitaph "Resting in the Blues" was placed in the cemetery of Payne Chapel near Quito, by the cemetery's owner. This alleged burial site, in an apparent attempt to strengthen a claim, happens to be located in the center of Richard Johnson's family plot.
• More recent research by Stephen LaVere (including statements from Rosie Eskridge, the wife of the supposed gravedigger) indicates that the actual grave site is under a big pecan tree in the cemetery of the Little Zion Church, north of Greenwood along Money Road. Sony Music has placed a marker at this site.

An interviewee in the documentary The Search for Robert Johnson (1991) suggests that due to poverty and lack of transportation Johnson is most likely to have been buried in a pauper's grave (or "potter's field") very near where he died.

Devil legend[link]

According to legend, as a young man living on a plantation in rural Mississippi, Robert Johnson was branded with a burning desire to become a great blues musician. He was "instructed" to take his guitar to a crossroad near Dockery Plantation at midnight. There he was met by a large black man (the Devil) who took the guitar and tuned it. The "Devil" played a few songs and then returned the guitar to Johnson, giving him mastery of the instrument. This was in effect, a deal with the Devil mirroring the legend of Faust. In exchange for his soul, Robert Johnson was able to create the blues for which he became famous. ^[49]

Various accounts[link]

This legend was developed over time, and has been chronicled by Gayle Dean Wardlow,^[50] Edward Komara^[51] and Elijah Wald, who sees the legend as largely dating from Johnson's rediscovery by white fans more than two decades after his death.^[52] Son House once told the story to Pete Welding as an explanation of Johnson's astonishingly rapid mastery of the guitar. Welding reported it as a serious belief in a widely read article in Down Beat in 1966.^[53] Other interviewers failed to elicit any confirmation from House and there were fully two years between House's observation of Johnson as first a novice and then a master.

Further details were absorbed from the imaginative retellings by Greil Marcus^[54] and Robert Palmer.^[55] Most significantly, the detail was added that Johnson received his gift from a large black man at a crossroads. There is dispute as to how and when the crossroads detail was attached to the Robert Johnson story. All the published evidence, including a full chapter on the subject in the biography Crossroads by Tom Graves, suggests an origin in the story of Blues musician Tommy Johnson. This story was collected from his musical associate Ishman Bracey and his elder brother Ledell in the 1960s.^[56] One version of Ledell Johnson's account was published in David Evans's 1971 biography of Tommy,^[57] and was repeated in print in 1982 alongside Son House's story in the widely read Searching for Robert Johnson.^[58]

In another version, Ledell placed the meeting not at a crossroads but in a graveyard. This resembles the story told to Steve LaVere that Ike Zimmerman of Hazelhurst, Mississippi learned to play the guitar at midnight while sitting on tombstones. Zimmerman is believed to have influenced the playing of the young Robert Johnson.^[59] Recent research by blues scholar Bruce Conforth uncovered Ike Zimmerman's daughter and the story becomes clearer. Johnson and Zimmerman did practice in a graveyard at night because it was quiet and no one would disturb them, but it was not the Hazlehurst cemetery as had been believed. Johnson spent about a year living with and learning from Zimmerman, who ultimately accompanied Johnson back to the Delta to look after him. Conforth's article in Living Blues magazine goes into much greater detail.^[60] There are now tourist attractions claiming to be "The Crossroads" at Clarksdale and in Memphis.^[61]

The legendary "Crossroads" at Clarksdale, Mississippi.

His own account[link]

Most musicians who knew Johnson well, such as Johnny Shines, never heard him claim that he had sold his soul to the Devil. Different accounts give contradictory information in this regard, but there is no conclusive evidence one way or another.

"Me And The Devil" begins, "Early this morning when you knocked upon my door/Early this morning when you knocked upon my door/And I said, 'Hello, Satan, I believe it's time to go,'" and continues with, "You may bury my body down by the highway side/You may bury my body down by the highway side/So my old evil spirit can catch a Greyhound bus and ride."

Johnson's lyrics to "Cross Road Blues" ("Standin' at the crossroads, tried to flag a ride") suggest he was hitchhiking rather than selling his soul to the Devil.

Interpretations[link]

Folklorist Alan Lomax was instrumental in preserving Johnson's recordings and spreading the mythology around his skill

The Devil in these songs may not solely refer to the Christian story of Satan, but equally to the African trickster god, Legba, himself associated with crossroads—though author Tom Graves deems the connection to African deities tenuous.^[62] As folklorist Harry M. Hyatt discovered during his research in the South from 1935–1939, when African-Americans born in the 19th or early-20th century said they or anyone else had "sold their soul to the devil at the crossroads," they had a different meaning in mind. Ample evidence indicates African religious retentions surrounding Legba and the making of a "deal" (not selling the soul in the same sense as in the Faustian tradition cited by Graves) with this so-called "devil" at the crossroads.^[63]

"The Blues and the Blues singer has really special powers over women, especially. It is said that the Blues singer could possess women and have any woman they wanted. And so when Robert Johnson came back, having left his community as an apparently mediocre musician, with a clear genius in his guitar style and lyrics, people said he must have sold his soul to the devil. And that fits in with this old African association with the crossroads where you find wisdom: you go down to the crossroads to learn, and in his case to learn in a Faustian pact, with the devil. You sell your soul to become the greatest musician in history."

—Bill Ferris, American Public Media: The Story with Dick Gordon^[64]

Folk tales of bargains with the Devil have long existed in African-American and European traditions and were adapted into literature. Two well-known examples are Washington Irving's "The Devil and Tom Walker" in 1824 and Stephen Vincent Benet's "The Devil and Daniel Webster" in 1936. In the 1930s Hyatt recorded many tales of banjo players, fiddlers, card sharks, dice players, guitarists, and one accordionist selling their souls at crossroads. Folkorist Alan Lomax considered that every African American secular musician was "in the opinion of both himself and his peers, a child of the Devil, a consequence of the black view of the European dance embrace as sinful in the extreme".^[65]

Musical style[link]

Robert Johnson is today considered a master of the blues, particularly of the Delta blues style; Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones said in 1990, "You want to know how good the blues can get? Well, this is it."^[66] But according to Elijah Wald, in his book Escaping the Delta, Johnson in his own time was most respected for his ability to play in such a wide variety of styles—from raw country slide guitar to jazz and pop licks—and to pick up guitar parts almost instantly upon hearing a song.^[67] His first recorded song, "Kind Hearted Woman Blues," in contrast to the prevailing Delta style of the time, more resembled the style of Chicago or St. Louis, with "a full-fledged, abundantly varied musical arrangement."^[68] Unusual for a Delta player of the time, a recording exhibits what Johnson could do entirely outside of a blues style. "They're Red Hot," from his first recording session, shows that he was also comfortable with an "uptown" swing or ragtime sound similar to the Harlem Hamfats but, as Wald remarks, "no record company was heading to Mississippi in search of a down-home Ink Spots ... [H]e could undoubtedly have come up with a lot more songs in this style if the producers had wanted them."^[69]

"To the uninitiated, Johnson's recordings may sound like just another dusty Delta blues musician wailing away. But a careful listen reveals that Johnson was a revisionist in his time . . Johnson's tortured soul vocals and anxiety-ridden guitar playing aren't found in the cotton-field blues of his contemporaries."

—Marc Myers, Wall Street Journal^[70]

Voice[link]

An important aspect of Johnson's singing was his use of microtonality. These subtle inflections of pitch help explain why his singing conveys such powerful emotion. Eric Clapton described Johnson's music as "the most powerful cry that I think you can find in the human voice." In two takes of "Me and the Devil Blues" he shows a high degree of precision in the complex vocal delivery of the last verse: "The range of tone he can pack into a few lines is astonishing."^[71] The song's "hip humor and sophistication" is often overlooked. "[G]enerations of blues writers in search of wild Delta primitivism," writes Wald, have been inclined to overlook or undervalue aspects that show Johnson as a polished professional performer.^[72]

Johnson is also known for using the guitar as 'the other vocalist in the song', a technique later perfected by B. B. King and his personified guitar known as 'Lucille':^[73]

". . in Africa and in Afro-American tradition, there is the tradition of the talking instrument, beginning with the drums . . the one-strand and then the six-strings with bottleneck-style performance; it becomes a competing voice . . or a complementary voice . . in the performance . . "

—Bill Ferris, American Public Media: The Story with Dick Gordon^[64]

Instrument[link]

Johnson mastered the guitar, being considered today one of the all-time greats on the instrument. His approach was highly complex and extremely advanced musically. When Keith Richards was first introduced to Johnson's music by his band mate Brian Jones, he replied, "Who is the other guy playing with him?", not realizing it was Johnson playing on one guitar. "I was hearing two guitars, and it took a long time to actually realise he was doing it all by himself,"^[74] said Richards, who would later add "Robert Johnson was like an orchestra all by himself."^[70]

"As for his guitar technique, it's politely reedy but ambitiously eclectic—moving effortlessly from hen-picking and bottleneck slides to a full deck of chucka-chucka rhythm figures."

—Marc Myers, Wall Street Journal^[70]

Lyrics[link]

In The Story with Dick Gordon,^[75] Bill Ferris of American Public Media said:

"Robert Johnson I think of in the same way I think of the British Romantic poets, Keats and Shelley, who burned out early, who were geniuses at wordsmithing poetry."

and:

"The Blues, if anything. are deeply sexual. You know, 'my car doesn't run, I'm gonna check my oil' ... 'if you don't like my apples, don't shake my tree'. Every verse has sexuality associated with it."

Influences[link]

Johnson fused approaches specific to Delta blues to those from the broader music world. The slide guitar work on "Rambling on My Mind" is pure Delta and Johnson's vocal there has "a touch of ... Son House rawness," but the train imitation on the bridge is not at all typical of Delta blues, and is more like something out of minstrel show music or vaudeville.^[76] Johnson did record versions of "Preaching the Blues" and "Walking Blues" in the older bluesman's vocal and guitar style (House's chronology is questioned by Guralnick). As with the first take of "Come On In My Kitchen," the influence of Skip James is evident in James's "Devil Got My Woman", but the lyrics rise to the level of first-rate poetry, and Johnson sings with a strained voice found nowhere else in his recorded output.^[77]

The sad, romantic "Love in Vain" successfully blends several of Johnson's disparate influences. The form, including the wordless last verse, follows Leroy Carr's last hit "When the Sun Goes Down"; the words of the last sung verse come directly from a song Blind Lemon Jefferson recorded in 1926.^[78] Johnson's last-ever recording, "Milkcow's Calf Blues" is his most direct tribute to Kokomo Arnold, who wrote "Milkcow Blues" and who influenced Johnson's vocal style.^[79]

"From Four Until Late" shows Johnson's mastery of a blues style not usually associated with the Delta. He croons the lyrics in manner reminiscent of Lonnie Johnson, and his guitar style is more that of a ragtime-influenced player like Blind Blake.^[80] Lonnie Johnson's influence on Robert Johnson is even clearer in two other departures from the usual Delta style: "Malted Milk" and "Drunken Hearted Man". Both copy the arrangement of Lonnie Johnson's "Life Saver Blues".^[81] The two takes of "Me and the Devil Blues" show the influence of Peetie Wheatstraw, calling into question the interpretation of this piece as "the spontaneous heart-cry of a demon-driven folk artist."^[72]

Legacy[link]

Robert Johnson has had enormous impact on music and musicians, but outside his own time, place, and even genre for which he was famous. His influence on his contemporaries was much smaller, due in part to the fact that he was an itinerant performer—playing mostly on street corners, in juke joints, and at Saturday night dances—who worked in a then undervalued style of music, and who died young after recording only a handful of songs. Johnson, though well-traveled and admired in his performances, was little noted in his own time and place; his records even less so. "Terraplane Blues", sometimes described as Johnson's only hit record, outsold his others but was still only a minor success.

If one had asked black blues fans about Robert Johnson in the first twenty years after his death, writes Elijah Wald, "the response in the vast majority of cases would have been a puzzled 'Robert who?'" This lack of recognition extended to black musicians:

"As far as the evolution of black music goes, Robert Johnson was an extremely minor figure, and very little that happened in the decades following his death would have been affected if he had never played a note."^[82]

With the album King of the Delta Blues Singers, a compilation of Johnson's recordings released in 1961, Columbia Records introduced his work to a much wider audience—fame and recognition he only received long after his death.

Rock and roll[link]

Johnson's major influence has been on genres of music that weren’t recognized as such until long after his death: rock and roll and rock. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame included four of his songs in a set of 500^[83] they deemed to have shaped the genre:

• “Sweet Home Chicago” (1936)
• “Cross Road Blues” (1936)
• “Hellhound on My Trail” (1937)
• “Love in Vain” (1937)

Johnson recorded these songs a decade and a half before the recognized advent of rock and roll,^[84] dying a year or two later. The Museum inducted him as an “Early Influence” in their first induction ceremony in 1986, almost a half century after his death. Marc Meyers of the Wall Street Journal wrote that, "His 'Stop Breakin' Down Blues' from 1937 is so far ahead of its time that the song could easily have been a rock demo cut in 1954."^[70]

Rock music and related genres[link]

Many of the artists who claim to have been influenced by Johnson the most, injecting his revolutionary stylings into their work and recording tribute songs and collections are prominent rock musicians. His impact and influence on these future star musicians from England—who would then come to develop and define both the rock and roll and rock music eras—resulted not from personal appearances or direct fraternization. Instead, the artistic power of his exceptional talents and original compositions would be relayed across the Atlantic many years after his death through the compilation of his works released in 1961 by Columbia Records (King of the Delta Blues Singers).

Sam Dunn's documentary Metal Evolution cites that Robert Johnson was the "great grandfather to all things heavy metal" with members of Rush and Slipknot agreeing that he played a major role in the future of rock music.

Examples of the influence he had on major musicians include:

• Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin referred to him on NPR's Fresh Air (recorded in 2004) as “Robert Johnson, to whom we all owed our existence, in some way.” His group recorded "Traveling Riverside Blues", a song that drew from Johnson's original and quoted a number of Johnson's songs in the lyrics.
• To Eric Clapton, founder and member of many legendary groups, Johnson was "the most important blues musician who ever lived."^[74] He recorded enough of his songs to make Me and Mr. Johnson, a blues-rock album released in 2004 as a tribute to the legendary bluesman (also made into the film Sessions for Robert J). He'd earlier recorded "Crossroads", an arrangement of "Cross Road Blues", with Cream in 1969, leading some to consider him "the man largely responsible for making Robert Johnson a household name."^[85]
• Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones introduced bandmate Keith Richards to his first Robert Johnson album. The blues master's recordings would have as much impact on him as on Mick Jagger. The group would perform his "Walkin' Blues" at the Rock and Roll Circus in 1968. They arranged their own version of "Love in Vain" for their album Let It Bleed; recording "Stop Breakin' Down Blues" for Exile on Main Street.
• He was a strong influence on Fleetwood Mac in the group's early years as a British blues band. Guitarist Jeremy Spencer contributed two covers of Johnson-derived songs to the group's early albums, and lead guitarist Peter Green would later go on to record Johnson's entire catalog over the course of two albums, The Robert Johnson Songbook and Hot Foot Powder.

Alexis Korner, referred to as "the Founding Father of British Blues", co-wrote and recorded a song entitled "Robert Johnson" on his The Party Album released in 1978.

Guitar playing[link]

The L1 from Gibson Guitar Company is a tribute model to Johnson

His revolutionary guitar playing has led contemporary experts, assessing his talents through the handful of old recordings available, to rate him among the greatest guitar players of all time:

• In 1990 Spin Magazine rated him 1st in its 35 Guitar Gods listing—on the 52nd anniversary of his death.^[86]
• In 2008 Rolling Stone magazine ranked him 5th on their list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time—70 years after he died.^[4]
• In 2010 Guitar.com ranked him 9th in its list of Gibson.com’s Top 50 Guitarists of All Time—72 years after he died.^[87]

Musicians who proclaim his profound impact on them, i.e., Keith Richards, Jimi Hendrix, and Eric Clapton, all rated in the top ten with him on each of these lists. The boogie bass line he fashioned for "I Believe I'll Dust My Broom" has now passed into the standard guitar repertoire. At the time it was completely new, a guitarist's version of something people would only ever have heard on a piano.^[88]

Lifetime achievement[link]

The Complete Recordings, a double-disc box set released by Sony/Columbia Legacy on August 28, 1990, containing almost everything Robert Johnson ever recorded, with all 29 recordings (and 12 alternate takes) won a Grammy Award for “Best Historical Album” that year. In 2006 he was awarded a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award (accepted by his son Claud).^[89]

Problems of biography[link]

"The thing about Robert Johnson was that he only existed on his records. He was pure legend."

—Martin Scorsese, Love In Vain: A Vision of Robert Johnson

Very little is known of Johnson's early life with any certainty. Two marriage licenses for Johnson have been located in county records offices. The ages given in these certificates point to different birth dates, as do the entries showing his attendance at Indian Creek School, Tunica, Mississippi. That he was not listed among his mother's children in the 1910 census^[8] casts further doubt on these dates. Carrie Thompson claimed that her mother, who was also Robert's mother, remembered his birth date as May 8, 1911. The 1920 census suggests he was born in 1912.^{[citation needed]} Five significant dates from his career are documented: Monday, Thursday and Friday, November 23, 26, and 27, 1936, at a recording session in San Antonio, Texas. Seven months later, on Saturday and Sunday, June 19–20, 1937, he was in Dallas at another session. His death certificate was discovered in 1968, and lists the date and location of his death.^[90]

The two confirmed images of Johnson were located in 1973, in the possession of the musician's half-sister Carrie Thompson, and were not widely published until the late 1980s. A third photo, purporting to show Johnson posing with fellow blues performer Johnny Shines, was published in the November 2008 edition of Vanity Fair magazine.^[91] The same article claims that other photographs of Johnson, so far unpublished, may exist.

"We don't know much, really . . there's so little known about this musician, other than these recordings that were made, and the fact that he died early, poisoned by the jealous husband of a woman he was hanging out with."

—Bill Ferris, American Public Media: The Story with Dick Gordon^[64]

Johnson's records were greatly admired by record collectors from the time of their first release and efforts were made to discover his biography, with virtually no success. Noted blues researcher Mack McCormick began researching his family background, but was never ready to publish. McCormick's research eventually became as much a legend as Johnson himself. In 1982, McCormick permitted Peter Guralnick to publish a summary in Living Blues (1982), later reprinted in book form as Searching for Robert Johnson.^[92] Later research has sought to confirm this account or to add minor details. A revised summary acknowledging major informants was written by Stephen LaVere for the booklet accompanying the compilation album Robert Johnson, The Complete Recordings (1990), and is maintained with updates at the Delta Haze website.^[93] The documentary film The Search for Robert Johnson contains accounts by Mack McCormick and Gayle Dean Wardlow of what informants have told them: long interviews of David Honeyboy Edwards and Johnny Shines, and short interviews of surviving friends and family. These published biographical sketches achieve coherent narratives, partly by ignoring reminiscences and hearsay accounts which contradict or conflict with other accounts.

A relatively full account of Johnson's brief musical career emerged in the 1960s, largely from accounts by Son House, Johnny Shines, David Honeyboy Edwards and Robert Lockwood. In 1961, the sleeve notes to the album King of the Delta Blues Singers included reminiscences of Don Law who had recorded Johnson in 1936. Law added to the mystique surrounding Johnson, representing him as very young and extraordinarily shy.

Discography[link]

	Traveling Riverside Blues noicon Cross Road Blues noicon
Problems listening to these files? See media help.

Eleven Johnson 78s were released on the Vocalion label during his lifetime, with a twelfth issued posthumously.^[94] All songs are copyrighted to Robert Johnson, and his estate^{[citation needed]}.

The Complete Recordings: A double-disc box set was released on August 28, 1990, containing almost everything Robert Johnson ever recorded, with all 29 recordings, and 12 alternate takes. (There is one further alternate, of "Traveling Riverside Blues," which was released on Sony's King of the Delta Blues Singers CD and also as an extra in early printings of the paperback edition of Elijah Wald's "Escaping the Delta.")^[95]

To celebrate Johnson's 100th birthday, May 8, 2011, Sony Legacy released a re-mastered 2 CD set of all 42 Robert Johnson recordings extant, entitled Robert Johnson: The Centennial Collection.^[96] In addition, there were two brief fragments: one where Johnson can be heard practicing a guitar figure; the second when Johnson can be heard saying, presumably to engineer Don Law, "I wanna go on with our next one myself."^[96] Reviewers commented that the sound quality of the 2011 release was a substantial improvement on the 1990 release.^[97][98]

Awards and recognitions[link]

Grammy Awards[link]

Grammy Hall of Fame[link]

National Recording Registry[link]

The Complete Recordings of Robert Johnson (1936–1937) was included by the National Recording Preservation Board in the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry in 2003.^[99] The board selects songs in an annual basis that are "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame[link]

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame included four songs by Robert Johnson in the 500 songs that shaped rock and roll.^[100]

The Blues Foundation Awards[link]

Honors and inductions[link]

On September 17, 1994, the U.S. Post Office issued a Robert Johnson 29-cent commemorative postage stamp.^[102]

Tribute albums[link]

There have been a number of tribute albums by guitar virtuosi, including

Films and other media[link]

• The 1986 film Crossroads is about a young white blues guitarist's search for Johnson's "missing" 30th song and the theme of blues artists selling their souls to the devil.
• Stones in My Passway: The Robert Johnson Story (1990), a biographical film by Martin Spottl.
• The Search for Robert Johnson (1991), UK documentary hosted by Blues musician John P. Hammond, son of John H. Hammond.
• Can't You Hear the Wind Howl? The Life and Music of Robert Johnson (1997)
• Hellhounds On My Trail: The Afterlife of Robert Johnson (2000, directed by Robert Mugge)
• Eric Clapton – Sessions for Robert Johnson (2004, documentary)
• Me and the Devil Blues: The Unreal Life of Robert Johnson (published in 2008) is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Akira Hiramoto. It is a phantasmagoric reimagining of Johnson's life.
• Celebration of the music and legend of Robert Johnson: Show 502 WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour. Rory Block and Scott Ainslie discuss Johnson and play his music. Taped 2008-09-29; 60 minutes audio (WMA, MP3), 88 minutes video (WMV).
• To commemorate Johnson's 100th birthday, Dogfish Head Brewery released "Hellhound on My Ale", a limited edition beer, in collaboration with Sony's Legacy Recordings division.^[104]
• Crossroads by Radio Lab the myth of what happened to Robert Johnson at the crossroads in Clarksdale, Mississippi.

See also[link]

Biography portal

• 27 Club

References[link]